the sublime visions mentioned above, and is accompanied by great delight and mirth. A strange feeling of ecstasy may pervade the body and senses, a thrill of delight flows through the limbs, which may even tremble from it.
These sensual and mental distortions and the experiences of diffusion and lightness reflect a deeper dissociation taking place between the ethereal and the physical body. A dream-like state results. The person becomes conscious of another level of existence, perhaps akin to what has been termed the ethereal or astral level. This disconnected state, however, must be understood for what it is; the beginning of psychosis.
The ecstatic state that Cannabis can produce is the reason that a whole generation of Cannabis users were misled into believing that ‘grass’ or ‘dope’ could provide them with a new dimension of understanding, more openness of the mind, an expanded awareness, and more spirituality. However, what it really created was a ‘spaced-out’ condition of the mind that could no longer discern the real from the unreal. The drug seems to promise its users that it will open them up to more freedom, but in reality it imprisons them in their own subconscious minds. It seems to promise to speed up the evolution of the mind, but it actually breaks the mind down and leaves it prey to its subconscious fears and incidental impressions from the environment, all mixed up in a confusing manner. Even many years after an individual has stopped taking the drug, it is still evident to us homeopaths how deeply this ‘wonderful’ drug continues to affect their health.
I remember a dramatic case that I encountered in Switzerland. An Italian cameraman had thrown a party during which he and his friends consumed huge doses of cannabis and engaged in a lot of sexual intercourse, in an uninhibited orgy. The next day he came out of the orgy a total wreck. His eyes could not focus on the camera. His mind was totally confused. He could not retain his urine, which was dribbling all the time. He had lost his will power